Friday, March 9, 2012

I had another awesome week! It was my first week of being a zone leader and it went awesome. Me and Elder Hicks have to set up our Sunday sacrament meetings and assign who is doing what.  We attend many meetings every night. They are basically about our district and making sure everyone is doing alright.  It's been a good experience.

I've been sleeping great! Each night I crash at 10:30.  I honestly can't wait to go to bed each night. It's the best thing ever! My roomates, however, are not as good.  They complain about my snoring.  They even wear earplugs.  However, I guess I'm still pretty loud.  But they'll live.

The Spanish is coming along.  My teachers have told me they are impressed with how much better

my Spanish has gotten from the first week until now.  I can understand a lot.  It is just trying to talk back.  I can scrape by when I chat with people, but when I give church lessons I can talk a lot better! It's really cool!

I've seen Dallin Ollerton, Mike Mortenson, Chaz Gandolph, Brigham Peacock, Neal Gardner, and some other kids I know through sports. It's really cool seeing everyone. I took a couple of pictures with Mike and Chaz.  I'll send my memory card home so you guys can see them.

I'm doing great!  I sometimes get homesick, but honestly who doesn't?  I know for a fact that everyone here gets homesick but we all know this is where we are suppose to be and that what we are doing will bless our lives, our family, and those we teach.

A cool experience this week was that Alex Boye (Mormon Tabernacle singer from England) came and did a fireside for us. He had the whole audience entertained the entire time!  It was honestly the best fireside I have ever been to.  He was HILARIOUS!  He was telling jokes, he talked about his conversion story, how powerful our message is, and had a piano guy with him that would play songs while he was talking to give his talk a more dramatic effect.  I felt like I was watching a movie. He also sang some songs - he has an amazing voice!  It was perfect. It was funny, serious, spiritual, and had jokes.  [Zach's dad: Brief video bio of Alex Boye.]

Anyway, I'm feeling the spirit strongly here and learning a ton!  I like sharing a spiritual thought each time I write, but today I want to challenge you to do something instead.  When you read the scriptures make sure you have a question in your mind that you want answered through your reading.  If you constantly think about that question while you read I promise Heavenly Father will answer it one way or another!  Another thing is that everyday before you go to bed think of an experience of where the Lord helped you during the day. You might not have noticed it at the time, but when reflecting back on your day, I promise you can find a lot of examples of where the Lord helped you.  I challenge you to write it down.  It's really cool to see how the Lord helps you daily!

I love you all so much and I'm thinking of you!  I want you to know that I'm doing awesome and that you don't need to worry about anything.  I'm GREAT!  Talk to you soon!

P.S.  I expect to get an NCAA bracket from you next week.